<HTML>In a message dated 8/25/01 7:32:27 PM Central Daylight Time, mjbkspal@execpc.com (Mike and Jane Spalding) writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">I just got back from the library - found the Britannica articles very interesting.  As usual, I drifted off topic a little and read their piece on "temperament".  They jump directly from Meantone to Equal, with only a vague mention of Well ("JS Bach's Well Tempered Klavier was probably a reference to a modified meantone..") </BLOCKQUOTE> This is what has bugged me for so many years.  Even the classic William Braide White treatise does not admit the possibility of anything but one extreme or the other.  It has created the mindset that there is *only* "one or the other", that is, there is either ET or something else, that *MEAN* tuning that is unacceptable and unusable.  I'm here to tell you that it just is not so.  ET is rarely achieved except by the most advanced methods, either aural or electronic.   Therefore, most piano tunings end up being something else, whether we really want to admit it or not. And as they say, the first step toward solving a problem is admitting there is one. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin</HTML>